Looking for the alphabet

This idea I found on Pintrest (check out my "I tried it and they loved it!" board).

What you'll need:

• Clear water bottle, label removed, and dry on the inside
• Small, colorful alphabet beads - I luckily found some at a dollar store but Lakeshore Learning also has some http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/seo/ca|searchResults~~p|2534374302174932~~.jsp
• Rice
• Funnel
• Laminated card with the alphabet printed on it, or any wipe off alphabet sheet
• Dry erase marker and eraser

Use the funnel to put about 1/4 of the rice into to the bottle then drop in some alphabet beads. Repeat until all the alphabet beads are in the bottle and submerged by the rice. Put the cap on tightly (use glue if you think necessary). Shake the bottle to see if the alphabet letters are distributed evenly throughout the bottle. One time I chose to dump some of the rice+letters out and put them back in with the funnel to better space them out.

Kids rotate the bottle the bottle and circle the letters on the sheet that they find in the bottle.

To be honest...I was surprised that they really took to it! Sometimes *I* think I have a great idea and *THEY* don't take to it - this time it was the other way around!

What are stations? Stations are activities that I've found/created for kids to use independently while I'm working with another set of students. The topics of the stations generally build on a topic that we've already learned about in class so there isn't a lot of new teaching that needs to be done